Editor's Note: Any reference to TheStreet Ratings and its underlying recommendation does not reflect the opinion of TheStreet, Inc. or any of its contributors including Jim Cramer or Stephanie Link.

Trade-Ideas LLC identified Duke Energy Corporation ( DUK) as an unusual social activity candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Duke Energy Corporation as such a stock due to the following factors:

DUK has 19x the normal benchmarked social activity for this time of the day compared to its average of 1.56 mentions/day.

DUK has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $199.1 million.

Identifying stocks with 'Unusual Social Activity' tends to be a valuable process for traders looking to capitalize on the 'talk of the town' stocks that are basking in far more attention from the StockTwits financial community than normal. Good press? Bad press? It ultimately doesn't matter if it's good or bad if you know how to trade around the sentiment. Certain hedge funds use such data for their proprietary algorithms and it is not uncommon to see shared social sentiment play itself out in a stock's price trend.

Duke Energy Corporation operates as an energy company in the United States and Latin America. The company operates in three segments: U.S. Franchised Electric and Gas, Commercial Power, and International Energy. The U.S. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 4.3%. DUK has a PE ratio of 26.0. Currently there are 8 analysts that rate Duke Energy Corporation a buy, 1 analyst rates it a sell, and 7 rate it a hold.

The average volume for Duke Energy Corporation has been 2.8 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Duke Energy has a market cap of $51.2 billion and is part of the utilities sector and utilities industry. The stock has a beta of 0.08 and a short float of 1.4% with 3.60 days to cover. Shares are up 13.6% year to date as of the close of trading on Tuesday.

TheStreet Quant Ratings rates Duke Energy Corporation as a buy. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its robust revenue growth, good cash flow from operations, expanding profit margins and increase in stock price during the past year. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had sub par growth in net income.

Highlights from the ratings report include:

DUK's very impressive revenue growth greatly exceeded the industry average of 12.6%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues leaped by 64.0%. This growth in revenue does not appear to have trickled down to the company's bottom line, displayed by a decline in earnings per share.

Net operating cash flow has significantly increased by 55.04% to $1,752.00 million when compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, DUKE ENERGY CORP has also vastly surpassed the industry average cash flow growth rate of -2.40%.

40.87% is the gross profit margin for DUKE ENERGY CORP which we consider to be strong. It has increased from the same quarter the previous year. Regardless of the strong results of the gross profit margin, the net profit margin of 5.77% trails the industry average.

DUKE ENERGY CORP has experienced a steep decline in earnings per share in the most recent quarter in comparison to its performance from the same quarter a year ago. The company has suffered a declining pattern of earnings per share over the past year. However, we anticipate this trend reversing over the coming year. During the past fiscal year, DUKE ENERGY CORP reported lower earnings of $3.06 versus $3.84 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($4.30 versus $3.06).

Compared to where it was 12 months ago, the stock is up, but it has so far lagged the appreciation in the S&P 500. Looking ahead, the stock's rise over the last year has already helped drive it to a level which is relatively expensive compared to the rest of its industry. We feel, however, that the other strengths this company displays justify these higher price levels.